All of which reminds me of my all-time favourite tabloid headline. I read this during the 2006 World Cup, a triumph for the power and possibilities of English grammar: “CrouchWAG on Crack.”

An example to us all in saving breath.

6.26: Michael Wolff, who wrote a biography of Rupert Murdoch, is calling on readers to boycott books until publishers stop putting out ghostwritten memoirs by brick-jawed politico-Mommy Sarah Palin and her like. Slate magazine has launched a Write-Like-Palin competition, challenging its readers to match the glory of this sentence from her latest opus, Going Rogue: “As the soles of my shoes hit the soft ground, I pushed past the tall cottonwood trees in a euphoric cadence, and meandered through willow branches that the moose munched on.”

Slate has also helpfully compiled an index for the improperly-referenced work.

6.50: Ducks back in a shonky sort of row this morning, after the skein was devastated by bird strike yesterday. Sometimes, getting somewhere before light turns out to be such a pyrrhic victory you feel like the Grinch that stole Christmas from a Jehovah’s Witness.